Layali (Roxanna Hope Radja) shows off her charms to her shocked family in Betty Shamieh’s THE STRANGEST
Fourth Street Theatre
83 East Fourth St. between Bowery & Second Ave.
Through April 1, $25-$45
www.brownpapertickets.com
Commissioned to write a theatrical adaptation of Albert Camus’s 1947 existential classic, The Stranger, playwright Betty Shamieh, the American-born daughter of Arab immigrants, chose instead to focus on what Camus didn’t write: the story of the nameless Arab man shot on the beach by the central character, Meursault, without reason or remorse. Continuing at the Fourth Street Theatre through April 1, The Strangest takes place in an Algerian storytelling café, where an audience of approximately forty to fifty people sit on cushions on benches or the floor, gathered around small tables where they can pour themselves cups of thick Turkish coffee. Umm (Jacqueline Antaramian), a woman in her early forties, has decided to share her personal tale, infiltrating the strictly all-male story competition. “I will show you three young men. You won’t know which son of Algeria would be shot until the end of the story. No magic carpets in the story either. Just an assassination of a child I bore, and the French man who shot him down will feel nothing before, during, or after. Strange, isn’t it?” she says. The tale Umm tells is a murder mystery with a sexy femme fatale, Layali (Roxanna Hope Radja), Umm’s niece, courted by Umm’s three sons: sensitive artist Nader (Juri Henley-Cohn), brutal thief Nemo (Andrew Guilarte), and meek shoemaker Nounu (Louis Sallan). Umm weaves many layers into her tale, including the fate of her village, her house, and her husband, Abu (Alok Tewari), a onetime master orator who is now a disabled mumbler; the flashback in which he tells a unique version of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves and declares his love for Umm is captivating and romantic. But when Layali brings home her fiancé, literally a French smoking gun (Brendan Titley), the rest of the family is disconcerted and upset, setting into motion a fast-unfolding series of ferocious events.
Sensitive artist Nader (Juri Henley-Cohn) makes a plea to his mother, Umm (Jacqueline Antaramian), in world premiere at Fourth Street Theatre
In researching Arab storytelling cafés, Shamieh (The Black Eyed, Roar, Fit for a Queen) went to Aleppo, Syria, in 2011, just as antigovernment protests were beginning there; sadly, the cafés she visited have since been destroyed, adding another sobering layer to the show, which already references racism, colonialism, rape, the current refugee crisis, and the shootings of black men, women, and children by white police officers. Director May Adrales (Vietgone, Luce) makes fine use of Daniel Zimmerman’s intimate, boxlike set; the actors, in Becky Bodurtha’s colorful costumes, enter and exit on two sides through wall curtains, the floor carpeted by numerous Oriental rugs. The uniformly strong cast is highlighted by the powerful acting of the three sons, particularly Henley-Cohn as Nader and Guilarte as Nemo, anchored by Tewari (The Band’s Visit, Awake and Sing!) and Antaramian (Dr. Zhivago, Mary Stuart) as the mourning mother; her pain is palpable as tears roll down her face. The play is filled with surprises, including a big-time, completely unexpected twist at the end. In the storytelling cafés, the audience votes on who tells the best story; with The Strangest, you won’t go wrong putting your money (a mere twenty-five dollars) on Shamieh and Adrales.
[An earlier version of this article misidentified Nemo as the shoemaker and Nounu as the thief; we regret the error.]